This is
the oath taken and encouraged to be shared by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, which he
stood by his entire life. It is the testament to his life and his dedication to
science and environment! RIP Dr. Kalam 1) I
realize that every mature tree by photosynthesis absorbs 20 kgs of Carbon
dioxide every year. By the same process each tree lets out about 14 Kg of
Oxygen every year. 2) I will plant and nurture ten trees and will
ensure my parents, my sisters and brothers plant trees and my neighbours also
plant ten trees each. I will be an ambassador for tree mission in my locality. 3)
I will keep my house and its
surroundings clean and use products which are bio-degradable to the extent
possible 4)
I will promote a culture of environment
friendliness, through recycling and conservation of water and other recyclable
materials both at home and school. 5)
When I take a professional career, I
will take decision with respect of organizational processes which protects the environment and
preserves the bio-diversity. 6)
I will encourage the use of renewable
energy to the maximum extent possible. 7)
I will spread the awareness about the
need to preserve the environment in my home, in my locality
and among my student friends. 8)
I will engage the water conservation,
especially by rain water harvesting and spread the message in my family and
friends.
Celebrated on July 28 each year, World Nature Conservation Day recognizes that a healthy environment is the foundation for a stable and productive society and to ensure the well-being of present and future generations, we all must participate to protect, conserve, and sustainably manage our natural resources. We all depend on natural resources like water, air, soil, minerals, trees,
animals, food, and gas to live our daily lives.
To keep the balance in the natural world, we must also help various species to
continue to exist. A report from the global conservation organization World
Wildlife Foundation suggests that since 1970, the pressure that we exert on the
planet has doubled and the resources upon which we depend have declined by 33
percent. Despite the efforts put into conservation by organizations and
conservation activists, their work has been undermined by those who have
interests.
Conservation of nature is very important, with scientists warning of mass
extinctions in the near future. Many nature documentaries show resources that
are being wasted. We have made this planet a world of steel and concrete to
sustain humanity but at the cost of other species, and it has become more
imperative upon us to conserve these resources that are vital to human survival.
Trees and plants consume carbon which has increased the planet's temperature,
increased storms and sea level rises and freshwater glacier melting that
threatens lives. Glaciers are connected to rivers and lakes which we depend on
for drinking water through city/town/community services (where did you think
your water came from?). Birds, bees and other insects pollinate the plants we
need to eat to stay healthy nutritionally. Factory foods provide reduced
quality in favor of the financial incentive. Children who spend time exercising
their senses in nature have been shown to increase their skills at a faster
rate than those who don't. Our planet provides us with all of the resources
that modern exploitation have given us, through wood, medicine, water, plants
and animals to eat, metals, vitamins, minerals - yet it's exploited for money
with systems of varied complexity. Nature has given us SO much. If we don't
conserve, we lose these precious privileges to exploitation and abuse of
resources.
The natural world is facing an increasing threat from unsustainable practices
and the challenge is how to preserve and conserve nature in the process of
achieving sustainable development.
The state of nature has an impact on human survival, local and global economics,
community life, human health and wellbeing.
On this day, let us make a conscious effort to contribute to the local,
national, and global efforts in conserving nature and the benefits they provide
for the present and future generations.
जून महिन्यात अलिबाग तालुक्यातील रेवदंडायेथे दुर्मिळ
चिंताजनक प्रजाती पैकी४२ फुट व्हेल
माश्याचा दुर्दॆवि मृत्यू झाला . त्याचा मृत्यूच्या दुर्दॆवा पेक्षा आमच्या
कडील काही महाभाग त्या मृत्यू पावलेल्या माश्याचा शरीरा बरोबर आपले सेल्फी
फोटो काढून आपल्या अडाणीपणाचे,अज्ञानाचे प्रदर्शन करण्यात धन्यता मानत
होते. पण अश्या अडाणी अज्ञानि समाजाला नम्र विनंती आहे कि आपल्याला निसर्गाप्रती
काही करता येत नसेल तरकिमान पक्षी असले
उद्योग तरी करू नकात जेणे करून इतरांना तुमची लाज वाटेल आपलं म्हणण्यास.
After years
of warnings from ecologists about the dangers of biodiversity loss, a new study
has quantified an ongoing mass extinction event — the sixth in our planet’s history
— and suggests humans are largely to blame.
The paper,
published June 19 in the journal Science Advances, takes a “conservative”
approach to measuring the extent of the situation because previous estimates
have been criticized for overestimating the severity of the extinction crisis.
The primary
researchers — from institutions such as UC Berkeley, Stanford University
and the National Autonomous University of Mexico — compared current extinction
rates with a normal baseline rate of two mammal extinctions per 10,000
vertebrate species per 100 years. Based on this measure, about nine vertebrate
species should have disappeared from the earth since 1900. But the paper’s
“conservative” extinction count stands at 477, which should have taken as many
as 10,000 years to occur.
Paul
Ehrlich, senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and
co-author of the study, notes that the species extinction rate is the highest
it has been in 65 million years.
“We’re
essentially doing to the planet what the meteor did that took care of the
dinosaurs,” he said of the data’s implications.
Seth
Finnegan, an assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s integrative biology
department who specializes in mass extinction, said the researchers’ study
contrasts with other studies that tend to estimate modern extinction rates
indirectly. For example, some measure areas of destroyed habitats and then
extrapolate extinction predictions based on how many species are believed to
exist in those areas.
“This study
doesn’t take the inferential approach,” he said. “They are tallying up
well-documented, well-observed extinctions of mammals.”
Though
extinction can occur because of a variety of environmental factors, the
study emphasizes humans’ effect on the alarming rate of species loss. According
to Finnegan, industrialization has “drastically accelerated humans’ impact on
Earth’s ecosystems.”
Co-author
Anthony Barnosky, a campus professor of integrative biology, cited a high
per-capita use of fossil fuels and the over-exploitation of ecosystems for
economic gain as major contributing factors.
“In one or
two human lifetimes, we are the ones wiping out what evolution took millions of
years to create,” he said.
In addition
to being the driving force behind the sixth mass extinction, humans will
ultimately face “high moral and aesthetic costs” in as little as three
lifetimes, according to Barnosky. Crucial ecosystem services, such as crop
pollination and water purification, will suffer if high rates of extinction
persist, the study says.
Considering
that it took up to millions of years for the planet to rediversify
after the previously recorded mass extinctions, the study says, these
consequences would be effectively permanent on human time scales.
Ehrlich
said that some conservation efforts could potentially slow the process of mass
extinction but said he agrees with the study’s conclusion that “the window
of opportunity is rapidly closing.”
“Conservation
biologists are hard at work trying to stop it,” he said. “But there’s not a
hope of changing this in the long run if human populations keep increasing and
we maintain a pattern of perpetual growth on a finite planet.”
What’s happening to honey
bees?
What happens if all bees die?
Big Five mass extinction events
Although the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or K-T) extinction event
is the most well-known because it wiped out the dinosaurs, a series of other
mass extinction events has occurred throughout the history of the Earth, some
even more devastating than K-T. Mass extinctions are periods in Earth's history
when abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously or within a
limited time frame. The most severe occurred at the end of the Permian period
when 96% of all species perished. This, along with K-T, are two of the Big Five
mass extinctions, each of which wiped out at least half of all species. Many
smaller scale mass extinctions have occurred, indeed the disappearance of many
animals and plants at the hands of man in prehistoric, historic and modern
times will eventually show up in the fossil record as mass extinctions.
Discover more about Earth's major extinction events below.
Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction The third largest extinction in Earth's history, the
Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction had two peak dying times separated by
hundreds of thousands of years. During the Ordovician, most life was in the
sea, so it was sea creatures such as trilobites, brachiopods and graptolites
that were drastically reduced in number.
Late Devonian mass extinction Three quarters of all species on Earth died out in the Late
Devonian mass extinction, though it may have been a series of extinctions over
several million years, rather than a single event. Life in the shallow seas
were the worst affected, and reefs took a hammering, not returning to their
former glory until new types of coral evolved over 100 million years later.
Permian mass extinction The Permian mass extinction has been nicknamed The Great
Dying, since a staggering 96% of species died out. All life on Earth today is
descended from the 4% of species that survived.
Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction During the final 18 million years of the Triassic period,
there were two or three phases of extinction whose combined effects created the
Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event. Climate change, flood basalt eruptions
and an asteroid impact have all been blamed for this loss of life.
Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the
K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other
organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many
flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs.
Papilio polymnestor, which is commonly known
as Blue Mormon, has been declared as the state butterfly by the Maharashtra
government on June 22. Maharashtra has also become the first state to have the
second largest butterfly, found in India, as the State butterfly.
The decision was taken at a meeting conducted
by the State Wildlife Board in Mumbai. The meeting was chaired by Finance and
Planning Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar. Earlier, the State of Maharashtra had
also considered Giant Squirrel as the state animal and Green Pigeon as the
state bird.
Here are some facts on the State butterfly of
Maharashtra, Blue Mormon:
It has velvet, black wings with bright blue
spots
It is the largest butterfly in India after
the Troides minos commonly known as the Southern Birdwing
It is only found in Sri Lanka, the western
ghats of Maharashtra, South India and coastal belts of the country
Out of the total number of butterflies in the
country, only 15 percent are found in Maharashtra. To conserve butterflies in
Maharashtra, Blue Mormon was declared as the state butterfly
The population of Blue Mormons is not
threatened. Although the Blue Mormons can be seen throughout the year, they
occur more commonly in the monsoon or after it
The most number of Blue Mormons are found in
Sri Lanka because the country has availability of the most number of food
plants
The butterfly is most common in evergreen
forests
The pupa of this butterfly is very large in
size
Blue Mormons usually like to sit on the Ixora
flower species.
·Pollution kills over 1
million seabirds and 100 million mammals every year.
·Garbage dumped in the
ocean every year is approx.7 billion kilograms, plastic being the major
constituent. Greenhouse gas emissions are also causing acidification of oceans.
·People in high-density
air pollution area have 20% higher risk of contracting lung cancer than people
in less polluted areas. The smog disaster in London in 1952 killed over 4000
people in a few days due to high concentration of pollution.
·80% of urban waste in
India is dumped in the river Ganga.
·There are 500 million
cars in the world and this is projected to rise to 1 billion by 2030, effectively
doubling the pollution.
·Composting and
recycling worldwide prevented 85 million tons of waste from being dumped in
landfills in 2010.
·Recycled glass can
reduce air pollution by 20% and water pollution by 50%
·Antarctica is the
cleanest place on earth, protected by anti-pollution laws.
·Children contribute to
only 10% of world’s pollution but are prone to 40% of global disease.
Source : Wonders of the Indian Wilderness by Erach
Bharucha
EnvironmentalFacts
India has just 2% of world’s land mass
but accounts for 8% of world’s biodiversity.
India has some of the wettest, driest,
hottest and coldest region on the planet. Two biodiversity hotspots are the
Western Chats and the East Himalayan region.
India has 2546 species of fishes, 198
species of amphibians, 423 species of mammals, 1331 species of birds, 408
species of reptiles and over 50,000 varieties of rice.
33% of species are endemic to the India,
which means they are not found anywhere else in the world.
929 species in India are threatened
today. Only 1% of the vast coastline is protected (75 km of 7516 km), the rest
is vanishing due to unplanned development work and fisheries.
Every 20minutes a speciesisbecomingextinctin theworld. The nextcouldbe from India.
Hopefully this awareness can encourage
everyone to priorities sustainability in their day-to-day life and in growth
& development activities.
